Dignity
by Prosper-the-XVIII
Summary: An alternative ending to Skyfall that involves M surviving, M and Gareth Mallory's 'retirement planning' argument rearing it's ugly head again, and Mallory taking a page out of Silva's book and trying his hand at cyberterrorism.
1. Chapter 1: Ressurection

Thank god Q had made Bond's little radio waterproof. M had been on the verge of death when the agent had remembered the thing, which had been in his back pocket, and an MI6 helicopter had picked him, Kincade and M, who had started to succumb to her injuries by that point, up from the charred ruins of Skyfall, Bond's childhood home. M was alive - again, thank god - but only just. There had been so much blood on her clothes, her coat in particular, Bond could have sworn that you could've wrung it out of them, and Kincade had told him that she had been limping for the whole time on the walk to the chapel. M had shrugged it off, telling both men that she had had either sprained her ankle, or even that she was completely uninjured. Bond hated her for doing that, but, stern and somewhat demanding as she was, Bond loved her at the same time (okay, in a kind of mother-son type way, not the way that he had completely fallen for Severne, or however you were supposed to spell the Russian hooker's name) and he didn't want her to die. At least not because of him. She had said on several occasions that Bond would be the death of her, but he had never intended for that to be _true. _  
"James," Kincade put his hand on Bond's leg. The 00 agent brushed it away. They were both sat awkwardly in the A&E of a hospital in, well, really the middle of nowhere. Kincade looked Bond in the eyes firmly. "James, keep your tampon in. I've got as little idea as you have on what the hell just happened, but you sitting there wetting your knickers isn't going to help Emma at all. Now if - and only if, god forbid - she doesn't make it, I don't want you to beat yourself up about it. No matter what happens, it wasn't your fault. And really, would it kill you to wash your hands every once in a while?"  
Bond snorted. "Like you can talk!" Both men were looking at the congealed blood darkening on Bond's hands. M's. He had made a pact to himself that he wasn't going to wash it off until he knew M's fate for certain. He didn't care what the old gamekeeper said. It was his fault that M's chance of survival was now down in the regions of 30%, and if she died, he would carry the blame until he did as well.

Bond looked across the room at a woman with frizzy dark hair that he was sure he knew. She had her face buried in a wet tissue, and there were tears gathering in her eyes. Wait, Bond thought. He _did _recognise her. "Eve?" He said tentatively. "What are you doing here?"  
When Eve spoke, her voice was oddly thick. "I got clearance to come here as soon as I heard the news. H-how is she?"  
"Don't have a bloody clue." Bond said. "I know that she's lost about three litres of blood, that there's a seventy percent chance that she's going to die, and that all that is completely my fault, but I don't know at all how she's doing at this particular moment in time."  
That was about to change. A male oriental-looking nurse walked up behind the three; Eve had gone and sat by Bond and Kincade, and tapped Bond on the shoulder. He turned around, somewhat angrily. "What?"  
"Mr Bond, this is about Evelyn-"  
Kincade looked confused, and Eve hissed something in his ear. Bond scowled. "She didn't make it, did she?"  
"No. Actually, she's doing pretty well. We've had her on a blood transfusion for a while, and she's starting to come round."

_Thank god. Thankgodthankgodthankgod!_

* * *

The sight of M in her current state didn't exctly make Bond feel much better, but at least she was alive. Okay, she looked eerily dead, but he could see her chest rise and fall with her every shaky intake of breath. Some little comfort, but not much. Her eyes were closed, and, although at the time it had seemed as if it had just ended up covered in blood from the wound in her hip, it had later been discovered that M had also been wounded in her left hand and forearm, and her injured arm was folded over her chest. There were a load of tubes and wires running in and out of M's arms. Bond looked at the floor. He was alone, Kincade and Eve had waited outside. This was his fault. His chain of guilty thought was cut off by M saying something. "Well, now I know that I couldn't be you," her voice was somewhat hoarse, and it clearly took a lot of effort to say anything at all. "Turns out that ressurection is a lot more painful than it sounds. I honestly can't imagine having it as a hobby." She shifted her position so she was sort of half sitting up. She grimaced as she did this, but managed it. Bond smiled, though the thought of what had happened to his boss, and more specifiaclly, _how _it had actually happened in the first place made him want to cry.

"How the hell, may I ask, are you still alive?"  
"Yeah, I love you too, Bond," M turned to face her 00 agent, her piercing blue eyes seeming to penetrate his soul. God, M's eyes always freaked Bond out, even on the rare occasions that she was trying to be pleasant. "I'm putting it down to willpower. Plus I'm not mad keen on the idea of Mallory getting my job. Honestly, is it worth expecting you to take the blame for all of this? Still, it takes a weight off of my shoulders. All this time I thought Silva was dead, and because of me..." M's voice tailed off when she noticed Bond staring at the chart pinned to the foot of her bed. "Jesus, how many middle names does one woman actually _need_? Hey, I always thought that M was just a randomly assigned intial. I never knew it stood for-" M cut him off, glaring at him. Her expression told Bond clearly that she wasn't joking.  
"One more word, I'll have you killed. We've been through this before. Last time it was a threat; now it's a promise. Anyway, the Marrion part was my mother's name, I'll give you that, but it's only my...third name, I think. And you knew all that before, anyway. We've been here before. Different time and place, but freakishly similar situation. You already knew my real name, as does everyone in that waiting room by now."  
"Yeah, sorry about that," Bond put a hand to the back of his neck, something he always did when he got kind of nervy. "Still, I think it suits you, the name Ev-"  
"I just need to say the word and you lose your job. Don't push your luck."


	2. Chapter 2: This Can't Go Well

"And on the subject of the whole name thing, why didn't you just make something up? It's not like I've got an official record or anything, they wouldn't notice!"  
"M, I'm driving. You'd better shut up or I'll end up killing both of us." M and Bond had been in the car for some three hours now, and still weren't out of Scotland. They had been arguing about just about any subject under the sun for the whole time. "I didn't have time to think up anything else. Besides, I tried M, and apparently, MI6 or not, they can't register you as that."  
"Well, at least you could have used my married name instead of my current one!"  
"Is there anyone but you on this planet who knows how to spell Bonham-Carter off of the top of their head?"  
"Well, you could have just said Evelyn Cameron! Did you really have to come out with the Judith Marrion Isabel MBE bit?"  
"M, shut it, or I'm stopping at the next service station and leaving you there. Okay, my turn. why do you have to sit like that? It's really distracting when I'm trying to see out of the rear veiw mirror." M was spread out across all three back seats in the exact same way she always seemed to whenever she was in a car with Bond. At this point, the car in question was a rented Honda Civic that had a stupidly high fuel consumption and was only capable of going at a snail's pace.  
"Well, I end up with motion sickness if I sit in the front when I'm not driving, and it's not like I've got any leg room if I try and sit in the conventional way."  
"I'm perfectly happy to pull over right now and let you drive!"  
"Like I'm in any fit state to be doing that. Look, I'm not moving. If you've got a problem, take it up with my soliciter."  
"What bloody soliciter?"  
M folded her arms (well, arm. Her wounded arm was in a sling, and she still couldn't move it.) "Exactly."

**(Sorry this is so short. I just thought it would be fun to have a bit about how M and 007 may behave when they're stuck in a car with each other for nine hours!)**


	3. Chapter 3: To Hell

**Just to let you know, there's some reference to one of my other fics, 'Scars Don't Fade' in here so you might wanna read that to get the full picture. **

"Ah, Evelyn," Gareth Mallory said, waving M into his cluttered office/apartment/study (or whatever the room they were in actually _was) _with a curt nod. M glared, and shouldered past him. She was looking about the best she had since the battle between her, Bond and Kincade and Silva and his men at Skyfall about a fortnight ago, but a combination of lack of sleep, having absoultley nothing to do due to the fact that Bond had forced her to take a month's leave, and general grumpiness had put M in one stinker of a mood. And when M got like that, everyone knew about it. This meant that she had a face like thunder and a far worse temper hidden underneath that stony expression. She was dressed in a black trouser suit with a white rose-shaped pin in the lapel of her jacket, white shirt, black wedge high heels and black pearl earrings and necklace. Her left arm was still in a sling, and she was limping a little, but looked a damn sight better than she had in some cosiderable time. "How are you?" Mallory said, clearing his throat as he did so. M looked right past him. "I've been better," she shot him a haughty glare as she spoke. Her tone of voice indicated hostility and obvious dislike. "And Mallory, there is only one record of me in existence. That record is on the MI6 computer system and it has me simply registered as M. So until that record says otherwise, you shall refer to me as M. Do I make myself clear?"

"Crystal, M. But may I ask, for how much longer?" M looked confused.

"You what?"

"How long until you go back to being just..." Mallory glanced at a note on the back of his right hand, reading it allure as he did so. "Evelyn Judith Marrion Isabel Bonham-Carter, MBE. Bloody hell, that's a long name!"

"Cameron," M corrected. "My surname's Cameron. Bonham-Carter was my married name and I am a widow. I chose to go back to my maiden name, Cameron, when my husband died. Wait a minute, am I right in thinking that this is that ' retirement planning ' shit coming back to haunt me?"

Mallory ignored her, and launched into some whole rehearsed spiel about 'retiring with dignity', all of which M had heard before. She spoke over him loudly. What she was about to say was pretty shocking, but in her defence, she very seldom said things like that. She was just getting incredibly pissed with Mallory. " Oh for fuck's SAKE! Mallory, just do the world a favour and put a sock in it, would you? You can go on about this until you're blue in the face, it'll make no difference. I retire when my job is bloody well finished. Trying to get me to resign is like banging your head off a brick wall, thankyouverymuch."

"But M, if you were to retire now you could do it with dignity, be a normal person, live out your last few useable years in comfort. And you could leave your precious organisation in the hands of...me, for example?"

M was surprised that she didn't physically explode. She felt like slapping Mallory in the face, but clenched her fist and restrained herself. "You disrespectful bastard!" M glowered. Mallory really was completely sub-human. "You make me come in here whilst I'm supposed to be off work, then basically tell me to step down and give you my job. We've been through this before and I don't intend to say it again. The day I leave MI6 will be the day I stop breathing. To hell with dignity, for god's sake! End of argument. You know when you took that bullet for me at the hearing, it never really changed anything. I still hate you and I probably always will. Can I leave now, or have you not wasted enough of my valuable time yet?"

"M, don't expect me to feel sorry for you because of what happened. I'm not going to go sobbing my eyes out over you like every other twat that works under you just because of your nonexistent ability got fire a gun."

"I have a goddamn excuse, Mallory, and you know it."

Mallory gave a contemptuous snort. His expression had changed, and he for all the world resembled a British version of Silva. His tone had changed as well, and he had clearly lost any intention of being at all pleasant. "And what might that be, whore?"

In response, M hitched up the sleeve of her jacket a little to reveal one of the jagged scars that covered her arms. "Bear in mind I just have to snap my fingers and you could be made redundant. So less of the whore."

"Still, I'm calling it sheer luck that you survived at all. But I'll get your job if its the last bloody thing I do. You'll see."

"Away and shit yourself!" This guy was really getting on her tits by now. M was doing all she could not to just tell him to leave on the spot. All that was holding her back was the hideous amount of paperwork that she would end up with if she gave him the sack. Plus, she couldn't be bothered finding a replacement for him. She knew that he worked for MI6, but she had no idea how. He was bloody useless, and he certainly had a cheek. Get her job indeed. Hmph! M turned on her heel and made to leave. "Where the hell are you going?" Mallory said, growling at her.

M scowled, shooting Mallory a filthy look. "I need the bloody toilet. Is that illegal all of a sudden?"


	4. Chapter 4: Not Now

M stood in the shower, working shampoo into her hair. She breathed a sigh of relief when it occurred to her that she was going back to work the next day. Being stuck at home alone with nothing to do had been driving her near demented. A month after Skyfall, and M was feeling better than she had in quite a long time. Apart from an occasional stab of pain in her side when she thought about the incidents of the night she was shot, she felt nothing at all, she had regained use of her left arm and she felt as if a new life had been breathed into her. M wasn't exactly the deliriously happy type, but she was feeling pretty damn good to be going back to what she loved doing the most.  
She stared down at herself. A twenty-eight year career in the field, plus a series of 007-related incidents had earned her a fair collection of scars across most of her body, now with the editions of her gunshot wounds, both of which were courtesy of Silva. She had known all along, even when he was an agent, that that man was no good.

M got out of the shower, slipped on the dressing gown she had brought into her en suite with her, wrapped her towel round her head and picked up her well-thumbed copy of 'To Kill A Mockingbird' (though for a joke, her daughter Patricia had written on the black cover with Tippex when she was nine, so it now read "How To Kill A Mockingbird") as she walked over to the chaise lounge in the corner of her bedroom. She sat herself down, and read the first sentence of the book for the six billionth time, though by now she knew it off by heart. _"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow..." _

"Hello!" A loud and oddly familiar voice called out. M screamed and nearly fell off of her seat when she saw the face of James Bond just centimeters away from her own.  
"Jesus, Bond! What the hell are you DOING here!?" She yelled indignantly and perhaps a little louder than she had meant to. "I have a bloody doorbell for a reason! Would you please learn how to use it, or work on a way of getting my attention that DOESN'T involve breaking into my home. Look, I don't know why you're here, and quite frankly I don't want to know. Just... remove yourself from my line of vision please."  
Bond had been crouching by M's side, and he extended to his full height. "Well it's for good reason. What did you think I was going to do?"  
M got up, yanking her dressing gown fully over her cleavage as she did so. "Bond, you will try and shag anything with a pulse. I think I am entitled to have my suspicions. And this had better be damn serious."  
"You know about all the girls I've slept with?"  
"Bond, I keep 24/7 tabs on you. You can't stick a finger up your nose without twelve people knowing about it, me included. Now what is it?"  
"Oh, well, y'know I thought I'd just pop in for a quick chat, get you even more pissed than you already are for your first day back..."  
"Oh Jesus, not now..." M groaned. " Right, since you're here, that's my chance of sleep completely down the loo. Look, let me get dressed, then do you think that it'd make this conversation any less awkward if we were to relocate somewhere other than my bedroom?"  
Bond shrugged. "Probably not, but it's worth a try."


	5. Chapter 5: End Of The Line

**OMG, I have completely forgotten to update this fic! Between something like 15 Revenge updates and my internet crashing I kind of haven't gotten round to it. Sorry! Right, update time, at long last.**

* * *

"Okay, what's your excuse this time?" M said, parking herself on a sofa across from James, maybe a little more decent in black silk pyjamas, her hair still soaking wet and absolutely all over the place.  
"Well, I wouldn't be here if you would check your emails every once in a while."  
"That just takes us back to my original point; front door? Really, what are you doing here? Again, may I add."  
"Well, Tanner was creating earlier because you've not been responding to emails and stuff, so I thought that I'd come by and remind you. It is kind of important, because otherwise you're not going to have a clue what's going on tomorrow – well, it's later today now, but who cares-"  
"Me," M muttered indignantly, suppressing a yawn.  
"I'll pretend I never heard that. Anyway, you've got an entire month to fit into one day later, and if somebody doesn't tell you beforehand, then Tanner's going to end up having to deal with the consequences, and I don't think the man's nerves would be able to stand it. Look, where's your computer?"  
M cocked her head towards a small pile of clutter in the corner of the room, among which was an Apple store bag. "Haven't touched the god forsaken thing since Q gave me it. I personally hate all this Apple stuff." Too true. M actually hadn't taken her new laptop out of the box yet. She wasn't exactly that well adapted to being totally reliant on technology, and had honestly struggled with her old Dell Mini Netbook, but that had been hacked beyond further use by Silva, and the replacement she had ended up with was frankly, aside from Mallory, her arch nemesis. She hadn't even bothered to remember the password.  
"Yep, I'm not even going to try to persevere with teaching you how to use a bloody computer at this time of night, just make sure you know everything you're doing tomorrow – I brought a printed version of the email here – and try to avoid murdering Tanner, okay?"

With that, James got up, leaving a wodge of printed sheets where he had been sitting, and stood up to leave, M getting up and yelling "DOOR!" after him. Deciding that this was utterly pointless; regardless of what she said, James was going to leave her apartment however the hell he wanted to, m sat down again and began skim-reading the sheets James had left behind. Oh great, she was _not _going to enjoy herself later. Between four debriefings, watching three psychology tests and taking one herself (the whole fiasco at Skyfall had somehow morphed into an official mission, so it was just standard procedure) and a two-hour meeting with Mallory, she was probably either going to have to fake her own death or give Tanner some headache pills and warn him in advance that she was probably going to end up in an absolute hell of a mood.

* * *

M was basically sitting staring into space, messing about with some general desk clutter that had somehow accumulated whilst she had been absent, and waiting for Mallory to turn up. God, he had some bloody cheek, making her take time out of her already packed schedule for this damn meeting, then not bothering to even turn up on time. She knew that he had been given a new position in MI6 whilst she had been gone, so it was now within her power to fire him - thank god - but there were two things stopping her from doing so;

a) She had to wait for him to screw up whilst he worked for her, as she didn't think that the thing with him trying to get her to retire would actually count

and b) She wasn't mentally keen on the criminally enormous amount of paperwork she would get if she eventually did, and the idea of foisting it all on Eve didn't really appeal to her either.

So, deciding against her gut instinct just to can him, she picked up the phone. "Mallory, you're half an hour late already, where the hell are you?"  
"Late for what, M?"  
"You know! Answer the question, please."  
"On my way, but I don't know why you're so keen to get on with it, I think if you've got half a brain you should've worked out what it's all about."  
"Just- get your ass down here. Now." Argh! M was *this* close to throwing the phone out the window. Questioning both her authority and general intelligence in the same breath was just too far. That was it, that was literally it. Phone still in hand, M had Eve on the other end of the line now. "Eve, just wondering, do you have any plans for the next few nights?"  
"Wha...no." M heard her secretary's somewhat confused voice.  
"Right, that's good. I'm firing Mallory."


End file.
